Your Right to Know

By Nick Cumming-Bruce &Anne BarnardTHE NEW YORK TIMES • Wednesday January 29, 2014 6:10 AM

GENEVA — The United Nations has trucks loaded with food for up to 2,500 people ready at a
warehouse outside Homs in western Syria but has not yet received authorization to proceed, a World
Food Program spokeswoman said yesterday.

In four days of stuttering peace talks in Geneva, the U.N. mediator for Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi,
has pressed Syria’s government and opposition to allow aid agencies to enter blockaded areas of
Homs and let civilians leave as a confidence-building step, but with little success.

Yesterday, the outcome of the talks was thrown into question when an afternoon session was
canceled over what opposition delegates described as differences over the goal of the talks, and to
give the government time to make a proposal for the future of the country.

“There is deep resistance by the regime to move the discussions onto the question of a
transitional government,” an opposition negotiator, Ahmed Jakal, told Reuters.

Murhaf Jouejati, a member of the Syrian National Coalition’s negotiating team, told the
Associated Press that the opposition was giving the government the chance “to come out with their
own vision for a future Syria” within the context of the first agreement made in 2012.

On the question of humanitarian assistance, the Syrian government says it is generally ready to
provide aid under an existing plan worked out with international agencies and blame any obstruction
on threats from insurgents. But the opposition coalition, its Western backers and some U.N.
agencies say that when it comes to specific permission, particularly for convoys to enter areas
under insurgent control, the government often denies access.

The World Food Program spokeswoman, Elisabeth Byrs, said the United Nations was preparing to
send a convoy once it received the go-ahead; the agency has been unable to get supplies into the
Old City of Homs for over a year.

“We wait until we get the green light,” she said. “So far we don’t have the green light so we
are on standby.”

U.N. agencies say they do not know how many people remain in the Old City, but the World Food
Program has prepared a month’s worth of supplies for 2,500 people, together with specialized
nutrition for children presumed to be suffering from acute malnutrition and stunted growth.